Bilingual short wins gold at New York awards

For theatre actor Gulshanara Khatun and her director

Apratim De

, February has brought with reasons to celebrate. Their short film Lost Luna received the Best Short Film, Gold Award at

New York

City Indie Film Awards, January 2020. “I am extremely happy to share this news with our well-wishers. Our director, Apratim, has helped me a lot essaying the role. He will be busy in February for his next, so they are sending the award to Kolkata by end of this month,” said Gulshanara, the protagonist of the short.

The bilingual short revolves around her character Durga, who is a baby-sitter and hails from a remote village in

Jharkhand

. “Though the short is in both Bengali and English, I don’t have any dialogue because my character is shown hailing from a tribal area and not able to communicate in any other language other than her native one. She only sings lullabies in her own language,” said Gulshanara.

While the short deals with a rather unconventional subject of professional breastfeeding women, its name Lost Luna is derived from the word lunatic. According to the director, lunatic here means one who is lost in her own world.